


your heart and mine

by starlightwalking



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Developing Friendships, Fin-galad Theory, Finduilas Is Gil-galad, Finwëan Ladies Week 2019, Friendship/Love, Gen, Gil-galad Son of Plothole, Hurt/Comfort, POV Second Person, Platonic Cuddling, Tenderness, Trans Character, Trans Maedhros, Trans Male Character, gender questioning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 00:49:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21066026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlightwalking/pseuds/starlightwalking
Summary: Maedhros asks the High King abouthishertheir[?] name.





	your heart and mine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [esmeraldablazingsky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/esmeraldablazingsky/gifts).

> WOW I'm finally done with all my FLW fics, only a month late to my own event!!!! time flies!!!  
This fic is for Day 7: Genderbending, and I really wanted to explore alternate meanings of that term other than just "canon male character is now female" and "canon female character is now male." So...here's a trans character and character who just doesn't really know and is bending all sorts of gender roles and feelings :)  
I was reading Stone Butch Blues as I started writing this, and I was definitely influenced in my choice of not using third person for this. SBB is in first person, but I don't like writing first person, so I tried second person instead...but overall, I wanted to write Fin-galad's POV in a gender-confusing fic without referring to them with any pronouns.
> 
> ALSO this is very much for Blazie/princess-faelivrin and inspired by her ["stressed depressed and super repressed club"](https://princess-faelivrin.tumblr.com/tagged/stressed-depressed-and-super-repressed-club) art and headcanons and etc!! These two are so SOFT and TENDER and i LOVE them

You wake with your head on his shoulder and his arms gently wrapped around you, and your first instinct is to flinch away. But he's still and calm, for once not on edge, and you can't bring yourself to do more than adjust your position. He's so rarely peaceful—and the same goes for you, if you're being honest with yourself. This moment of quiet is too precious to break so soon.

But even your slight movement as you untangle your arm from beneath the weight of his prosthetic is disturbance enough for him to start into wakefulness. You fall still. He doesn't move, but he tenses. His guard is back up.

You still don't know how much you can trust him, this war-wearied Kinslayer. But you can't hate him, because something in your spirits is the same. You don't know quite what it is, but there's a bone-deep connection between you and him, one neither of you intended to forge, but...he's the child of smiths, and you're a leader. Forging and connections is what you do.

"Your Majesty?" he murmurs. "Are you awake?"

"Mm," you mumble, not wanting him to leave you alone in the cold night air. His shoulder isn't the most comfortable pillow, true, but you need a warm body beside you. You can tell he needs one, too.

"I didn't mean to hold you like a child," he says, his arms still draped around you, "but you looked so tired..." He doesn't say that he misses his little brothers, or the children he's left behind to fight in this war. He doesn't have to—for all you have no siblings or children to care for, you understand. You, too, are alone in this world.

"It's alright." You yawn, reluctantly aware that your moment of rest is over. "Any news?"

"No, your Majesty. The siege continues."

"You don't need to call me that," you say. "We are—allies. Friends, if I am not too bold."

He won't meet your eyes. He doesn't say it, but you know what he's thinking: _You don't want to be friends with me. It's too dangerous._ You know, because you've thought it too.

"Well, then, what should I call you?" he says, and for some reason you hadn't expected that question.

"My name," you answer, but as the words leave your lips you know it's more complicated than that. Even if it weren't so common among your folk to have many, many names, there was the matter of your identity, a subject you had yet to breach with him.

"And...what is your name, if you don't mind me asking?" This time you catch his glance, and there's a gentle understanding there that surprises you into unguarded honesty, if just for a moment. "I know it's more complicated than what everyone calls you."

"I don't know," you blurt out, and you immediately close your eyes, bracing for a reply of scorn or pity. But nothing comes: he's waiting for you to explain.

You realize that he _cares_. It's not that everyone around you has been unsupportive—you've had allies and friends throughout your transition from princess to king—but they'd all seen the issue of your name as an obstacle to overcome, a problem to be solved. He cares about your fractured sense of self, your secrets and your uncertainties, your troubled heart, and all the other things a name can symbolize.

"I don't mean to pry," he says, "but I think you could benefit from getting it off your chest." A flicker of sardonic amusement flashes across his scarred face, and your chest tightens. You don't get the joke.

"How much do you know?" you ask him. You can never tell, with those closest to you. He's starting to encroach upon that circle of friends, and he's one of the few who's only ever known you after your change.

"I know you're a survivor from Nargothrond," he says. "I know you're evasive about your parentage, but from one Finwëan to another, I can tell you're related to Arafinwë...and I can tell he doesn't quite realize it. I know that Círdan calls you Finduilas in private. I know that you may or may not be the princess who wasn't murdered after all." Another flicker of amusement, and this time you can guess the source. He, too, was thought dead before his time.

"I am Orodreth's child," you admit, and it's a relief to say the words with no veiled meaning behind it. It's the truth, and not an attempt to pretend that you're your own nonexistent brother.

He nods. "Then the Princess Faelivrin did not perish at the Crossings of the Teiglin?"

You sigh. This is the complicated part. "She did," you say softly, "but you are right in your guesses."

"You survived, then," he murmurs, "but your fae was changed." With his single hand he gently brushes your hair, dark at the roots but still golden at its frayed edges, then draws back. He can feel your discomfort, and he shares it. Some feelings, some actions bring back memories still too raw to overwrite.

"You took a new name for your new role," he continues. "Gil-galad." His eyes flick upward, to where Eärendil's ship contends with dragons in the sky, its light repulsing them.

"Your nephew gave me that name," you tell him. It's a small thing, but you can see the comfort in his eyes as he is reminded of the good of which his family is still capable. "A symbol of hope, before Eärendil was even born. I sang a hymn to Elbereth as we traveled through treacherous lands, to lift the spirits of my weary people...he saw something in me before I knew what I would become." You smile at him. "You saw it, too, when you introduced me as the High King."

His face, already ruddy, reddens further. "You are the leader we need," he mumbles. "I was tired of waiting for everyone else to realize it."

You lean into his warmth. "Thank you."

"And...Ereinion?" he asks.

You smirk. "Once the seed was planted, I needed to help it grow. I _am_ the scion of kings—of Orodreth, of Finarfin, of Finwë."

"I ought to claim such a title," he teases, but then his eyes darken. "Though I suppose I gave up any chance of claiming the kingship long ago." There's a sadness in his rumbling voice, so ancient and melancholy that you can feel your bones ache with the depth of it. "You are a better king than I ever could have been, your Majesty."

"I said..." But you trail off. You still haven't given him a name by which to call you.

"Should I call you Finduilas, then?" he asks.

You shake your head. "Círdan sees Gil-galad as a front, a necessary disguise in these turbulent times. He wants to reassure me that he respects me as a woman, and that he honors my past. It's very sweet of him, and I don't mind. But when I took the name Gil-galad, I _became_ Gil-galad, long before I claimed the kingship. And yet..."

"And yet?" he prompts after a moment of silence.

You can't meet his eyes as you say it. You've never met another with the same troubled soul as yours; at least, none who yet lived. And those who could have helped you...well, they are here no longer.

Still, there's something about him that makes you trust him. So even though you turn away as you do, you still say it: "I don't know if that makes me a woman or a man."

He is silent for a long time, and you fear you've gone a step to far in admitting this secret. But he makes no move to push you away, and his breathing is slow and steady as it has been all night.

"Fëanor did not always have seven sons," he says suddenly, and you jerk your head up to blink at him in confusion. What does that have to do with anything?

"Of course not, your mother did not give birth to septuplets," you joke weakly. "He had one son, and then two, and so on, though I suppose the twins did come all at once."

He looks at you with utter sincerity. "You know what I mean. We're akin this way, your heart and mine."

You do know, but you need to hear him say it. Perhaps he's right that your hearts beat to the same rhythm, because he continues as if he's read your mind.

"When I was born my mother named me Maitimë," he says softly. "My father called me Nelyafinwë, of course; a little thing like the supposed gender of his eldest child would not stop him from slighting his half-siblings. But my mother adored her little girl. I was perfect, a reflection of her in miniature form."

"I did not know..." You trail off, unsure of how to finish that sentence. There are a lot of things about him you do not know, you realize. Perhaps those hidden uncertainties outweigh the evils that are common knowledge.

"Not many do, especially here in Beleriand." He shrugs. "It is simpler, in a way few things are these days."

"What changed?" you ask, fumbling for the words. If your change came out of a moment of trauma, what had happened to him in the bliss of Valinor?

"For me? Nothing," he says. "I have always been this way. I simply informed my parents of the true nature of my fëa, and they listened and believed me. They are—my father was..." His throat tightens, and you interlace your fingers with his in a show of comfort.

"Nevermind that," he says hoarsely. "I became a prince instead of a princess. It helped that I am so tall. Tyelko...Celegorm was only a baby at that time. Of my brothers, only Maglor remembers me as anything other than the eldest son of Fëanáro."

"I don't know what I am," you say, pleading without the right words for his advice, his reassurance. "I used to be a princess, in that other life. I had a girlhood. I was almost a wife. But now...I am a king, but I do not know if that makes me a man."

"What do you want to be?" he asks with more patience than you can muster for yourself.

"I don't know," you weep, and this time it is he who squeezes your hand comfortingly.

"You don't have to know," he says. "That's alright. Caranthir never did, either. He died before he could decide if he was man or woman, or neither."

You start, somehow astonished that more than the two of you existed in this in-between state. "Caranthir? I didn't know he—she..." You don't know what the right words are.

"He was alright with this way of referring to him," he says. "The Valar know our father was enough of a linguist to interrogate us all on _that_ subject. What of you? It's alright if you don't know, but I don't want to say the wrong thing."

"He," you say firmly, because it feels right, and because otherwise would be too confusing for those who know you only as the High King. "And...you may call me Gil-galad. Or—" You smile. "Gil, for short."

"Thank you for bearing your heart to me, Gil," he says gravely.

"Thank you for listening," you whisper, sinking deeper into his embrace. It has been a long time since you trust anyone to cradle you in their arms the way he holds you, but you trust him. Kinslayer or no, you need his friendship. And he needs yours.

Above you in the skies the dragons flee shrieking from the light of the Silmaril. His eyes are closed to the radiance of his father's jewel, but you stare up into Elbereth's heavens, comforted by her stars. Victorious, Eärendil descends; perhaps this shall turn the tide of the siege. It will certainly mean that you must convene with the other leaders, and don your armor once more.

But for now you let your eyes close again, drawing comfort from Maedhros' warmth, and let your weary hearts beat together in peace for a few moments longer.

**Author's Note:**

> I think Fin-galad is probably genderfluid, but in a more long-term sense of the word...she was a girl for a long time, then shifted over time to a man, and then shifted back to a woman, with periods of nonbinary-ness in between, but it's all very confusing for them the whole way through. As Gil-galad he uses he/him pronouns, though; this is kind of where he makes that decision.  
\--this is just my headcanon, though, feel free to have your own!! Same goes for Mae, for this fic I really like the trans man!Mae hc but I don't always go with that :)
> 
> Thanks for reading and commenting!  
You can find me on tumblr [@arofili](http://arofili.tumblr.com/), and check out the [Finwëan Ladies Week blog](http://finweanladiesweek.tumblr.com/) too!


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